The Thrill of Victory: Measuring the Incentive to Win

Abstract

There is ample evidence that incentive-pay structures, such as tournaments, result in increased performance. Is this due to selection or increased individual effort, and is any increased individual effort caused by pecuniary incentives or merely thirst for the thrill of victory (TOV)? Prior literature has not separated the different effects. We look at performance in horse and dog racing and find that only horses, controlled by jockeys during the race, exhibit performance corresponding to pecuniary incentives, while both respond to selection and TOV. The results show that pay structures do matter. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago.

Entrepreneurs embrace competition: evidence from a lab-in-the-field study

“…To demonstrate that entrepreneurs enjoy competition independently of their desire to win, model 4 allows the effects of revealed and potential entrepreneurs to be moderated by confidence in winning. Through the interaction with the confidence in winning, we can identify whether the observed effect is driven by the desire to win (cf., Coffey and Maloney 2010). We observe that the estimated coefficients of interaction terms are not statistically significant.…”

“…This, however, does not imply that individuals with a strong desire to win also have a general tendency to favor competitive over non-competitive environments. On the contrary, individuals with a strong desire to win might even shy away from competitions they believe that they are not able to win (Connelly et al 2014;Coffey and Maloney 2010). Hence, the desire to win may affect the likelihood that individuals select into competitive environments, but this effect is-in contrast to the effect of enjoyment of competition-conditioned on individuals' expectations of winning the competition.…”

What Can Bookies Teach Us About Pari-Mutuel Wagering Reform? Applying Australian Lessons to the U.S.

“…Horse race gambling in the U.S. uses the pari-mutuel format exclusively. 5 Takeout rates in the US tend to be set directly by state government or by the state's regulatory body over gambling, though some states offer racetracks limited discretion. 6 As of 2008, takeout for win bets ranged from California's 15.4% to Arizona's 20% (HANA 2008).…”

Selection and incentives in contests: evidence from horse racing

“…For example, Lynch (2005) shows that a steeper prize structure -where the difference in prize money be-tween first and second, for example, is greater -leads to quicker running times and implicitly more effort. Coffey and Maloney (2010) use horse and dog racing data to disentangle the component of effort that is caused by incentives, from the component of effort that is observed because of higher quality selection. Horse racing is particularly well-suited to the objectives of our study for three reasons.…”